Create an action to play an animation

In the Actions dialog box, click the Play Animation button. The new Play Animation action is added to the Action list. By default, an existing animation is selected, with default settings specified.

In the Action list, select the Play Animation action you just added. The bottom portion of the dialog box displays the properties that can be set for this action.

In the Play Animation section at the bottom of the dialog box, in the Animation drop-down list, select the animation object you want to play.

In the Restart drop-down list, specify how the animation object behaves when it is triggered while already playing.

Always: The animation will be restarted every time it is triggered.

When Not Active: The animation can be started only if it is not playing. Attempts to restart the animation while it is already playing are ignored.

Never: The animation can never be restarted. It plays once, and it cannot play again.

To play only a portion of the Animation object, check the option adjacent to the Start field, then in the Start and End Fields, specify the Start and End frames of the animation.

To repeat the animation, select Loop, then set the repetition options:

Forever: Repeats the animation until it is stopped using a Stop Animation action.

# Times: Specifies the number of times the animation should be repeated.

Accumulate Animation: Each iteration of the animation builds upon the last value of the previous iteration. Each time the animation is repeated, the animated object uses as its start value the end value of the previous iteration.

For example, suppose you animate the width of an rectangle from 0 pixels to 10 pixels over a 10-second period. The next time the animation repeats, the starting width would be 10 pixels, and the width would increase to 20 pixels. After five iterations, the rectangle is 50 pixels wide.